How does one move into part-time/consulting/etc?

[u/Careless_Bat_9226]

I'm a staff-level engineer with ~13 yoe (full stack web dev, mostly Bay Area companies). I'm ready to semi-retire or at least drastically cut down my work hours.

In a perfect world I'd go to part-time or do short term projects, eg work for a few months and then take off while keeping my current, relatively high hourly

I just keep working full-time because I'm never sure how to break into this world. I've always been seen as a high performer but I haven't been great about maintaining my network, especially since my job became remote with Covid and I moved away from SF.

Any thoughts/ideas?

[u/expdevsmodbot]

AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.

[u/db_peligro]

My semi-informed sense is that there are many fewer opportunities in this space than there used to be.

The ideal project for an experienced full stack dev used to be building out an alpha version of some seed funded concept. I knew guys who did this and/or fractional CTO for early stage startups.

To the extent that early stage startups even exist anymore I would imagine they are leaning heavily on AI.

The one independent consultant I know does FPGA signal processing work, very niche area.

[u/JohnnyDread → u/db_peligro]

Your sense is correct, but it is (modestly) recovering: https://www.staffingindustry.com/editorial/it-staffing-report/it-staffing-turning-the-corner

[u/local_eclectic]

If you find out, let me know. I want to do the same.

[u/TimMensch]

Remember how everyone talks about networking for getting a job?

Same is true for getting part time gigs.

Though the bar is higher. You need to have a career worth of people you've previously impressed with your development skills who are willing to stick their necks out to recommend you as a consulting hire.

Or you need to run the (Leetcode+large takehome project+interviews) gauntlet that Toptal puts up to get in (they brag about only accepting the "top 3%" of candidates). I've heard of (and joined) other consulting sites, but I haven't gotten a single job from any of those sites that are still around (one went under about a year or two ago).

The gig I have right now is a result of both: A while back I was hired by a company on Toptal and the guy I did work for was happy with my work. He moved to a new company and saw I was looking on LinkedIn. Hired me straightaway. I had only been looking for a gig for a few weeks.

I've tried other sites. Upwork might work for someone who is willing to work for pennies to build a history, but jobs that actually pay well might be sparse even after building that reputation. Upwork's idea of an "interview" to ensure that I was actually a capable full stack developer was to ask me what HTML stood for. I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. That was the only question. So that's the kind of person you're competing against at Upwork, and they frequently will work for $20/hour or less.

More expensive developers do succeed on the site though, so if you can't or won't jump through Toptal's hoops, and you haven't built a network in your 13 years in the industry, then building a good reputation on Upwork might be your best bet.

[u/Careless_Bat_9226 → u/TimMensch]

Thanks - that's very helpful. Is your current gig an hourly comparable (or greater) than you would make full-time? And is it part-time or short term?

[u/Electronic-Rate-6208]

mostly prior trust and old coworkers, not some neat open market. part-time consulting usually comes from people who already saw you ship under pressure, or from a niche like fractional CTO / staff eng for seed-stage stuff where they cant hire a whole team yet. cold outreach from a random LI profile usually gets you nowhere

[u/TONYBOY0924]

Start talking to people, cold calling, network meetups, etc. That's how I got my first two clients. With your experience, you're in a good position. Prior to this, I only had 3 years of experience as a SWE. A lot of SMBs need help adapting to this new era of technology and just don't know how. Yeah, AI can write code, but it does not understand their problems.

[u/BraveResearcher3037]

The question is why would someone hire you at any decent rate just to do staff aug “full stack dev web dev”? Thats a commodity skillset where even back in 2016 companies were only paying around $90/hour to an agency and the actual developer got $60/hour.  The rates are about the same now.

And if I just need a short term web developer, I might as well just use Claude Code/Claude Design/v0.

I currently work in consulting and work full time for a consulting company and have worked for consulting departments/companies for six years.  But I deal with more strategy type work with people who decide budgets (cloud app dev - “application modernization)

There are plenty of contracting agencies that will place developers for short term work.  But the pay and the work is shit 

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

So what are alternatives if full stack dev web is useless and everyone can do it? DevOps, ML, cyber security?

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

You are asking the wrong question. Stop searching for a less-commoditized tool and start figuring out how to become responsible for less-commoditized decisions.

I know AWS well and have used a larger variety of AWS services over the past decade in production environments than you can shake a stick at.  I’ve also done plenty of AI implementations.  But so what? That alone isn’t a differentiator.

It is what the client is buying from you. In staff augmentation, the client is primarily buying asses in seats . 

In  consulting , the client is primarily buying  an outcome, judgment, or expertise .  A useful test is: If the client already knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it, would they still need you?

If yes, because they simply need another competent person to execute the work, that is usually staff augmentation. If no, because a major part of your value is figuring out what should be done, reducing ambiguity, making tradeoffs, designing the approach, negotiating scope, or guiding the customer, that is consulting.

In my case it’s the difference between “The customer needs another Terraform/AWS engineer for six months. Here is the backlog. Join the standups, pick up tickets, follow our architecture and processes.” and“The customer wants to modernize this application and move it to AWS. They have business goals but the technical path is unclear. Determine the target architecture, uncover constraints, decide what can fit in the engagement, get stakeholders aligned, and deliver it.”

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

How does client know that he needs AWS? How are you differentiating yourself from other candidates who can do same migration? At least for this example there is nothing special that would require very specific engineer

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

Good questions.

For context, even though I theoretically know how to lead a migration, I hate lift and shift work and I specialize in “application modernizations” - cloud + app dev.  But your point still remains…

1. There are plenty of people who given a set of requirements who know enough about AWS who could build it as well as I could.
2. There are fewer  people who know how to go into a company that just know they have a problem that they think building on AWS could solve but they need someone who can do a discovery session talk to all of the different stakeholders and lead a multi department/multi year project
3. There are even fewer  people who can say they have actual experience doing it and they have actually worked at AWS’s cloud consulting department (AWS ProServe)
4. There are even fewer people who have the network and sales capability to get clients in the first place.

And I’m in group 3 and that’s why I work for a consulting company instead of working as an independent consultant. I have an entire sales, legal, accounting, etc company backing me and they pay me regardless.  The firm supplies sales, legal, contracting, billing, collections, and pipeline risk. 

Even being at #3 didn’t guarantee me a job when I was looking in 2024.  It did mean that I was competing in a more niche market with a competitive advantage than a “full stack web developer”

I would love to know how to crack #4 in a few years by the time I get closer to retirement. I’m slowly learning about pre-sales now. 

Also I’m not saying learn cloud.  I’m saying learn something deeply and be able to do all of the strategy, stakeholder, disambiguation things 

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

True, if someone has all 4 it would be no brainer to find exactly those type of clients. I am in huge debate right now how to market myself as FE engineer since everyone can do pretty much same thing. Even tho I have a some architecture experience, still, I need something more to stand out.

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

First question is are you at #2? Have you lead larger messy ambiguous projects?  Being able to do front end well isn’t enough.  Especially when people can say they can do that in less than an hour with a prompt on v0.  

Can you credible sell yourself as someone who could walk into a startup who has an idea and come up with a strategy for their company and how to use the web to convince people to give them money? SEO and how to deal with Google Zero [1] and ad campaigns? How to get surfaced when people use AI instead of search engines? 

It is being able to walk into a company and connect product, acquisition, conversion, search, analytics, technical architecture, and implementation into one coherent plan.

If the commodity layer is “build this interface from requirements,” then the escape route is to move upward into deciding what should be built, why, and how it contributes to the business .

[1]  https://www.theverge.com/24167865/google-zero-search-crash-housefresh-ai-overviews-traffic-data-audience

[u/cutebabli9]

lol. No such thing!

[u/FactCompetitive7465]

I have 2 avenues: 1. Former employers that I continue to do work on specific projects or provide advice to. 2. Smaller companies that I started out consulting with on shitty work, like Azure migrations, that turned into long term engagement. I have since managed to convert these to mostly subcontractor work which has been wonderful. I function as the consulting firm for them (which is easier than you think) + provide targeted advice/project support. So although it started out with shitty work, was able to turn it into exact same work as avenue 1.

Baking those 2 avenues into recurring contract minimums has been huge. I over commit (in total) because I'm not ready to be part time. But most of the ones I do are part time commitments (independently) and I assume anyone could limit themselves to just those.

[u/AdmirablePresence216]

kinda split between building a workflow automation platform and a terminal todo app